Two of the most practical and effective actions we can take

Crap is crap no matter what kind of package you put it in. There ain't no way you can make it pretty, Josh. Stop trying to make it pretty. Just do it. Just, just show it for what it is. 

 - Lisa Bracken, Colorado resident interviewed in Gasland

Below are two of the most practical and effective actions that each of us can take to foster a future of satisfaction and well being for all life.


1. Educate ourselves.
Most of us use up a lot of our free time on entertainment of one kind or another. And we justify it with hard work, focus, passion, and commitment at work during the day. There ain't no way I can make this pretty - we need to educate ourselves on the facts, we need to get connected to what really matters to us, and we need to start doing it now.

There's information arguing both sides of every topic, obviously. My recommendation is that you err on the side of life and its well-being. Whose side are you on?


2. Talk to everyone about it.
It's usually fun, but it's not easy to get going. That's my experience. But we need to talk with everyone about it. The more we talk about it, the more we discover about ourselves and the issues, and the more we educate others and continue to build a movement. There's no top-down solution to our problem of a diminishing future. It's a bottom-up movement, and it will only get built through conversations.


Here's a relevant quote to close out this week's post:

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

- Winston Churchill 

(I'm developing a list of the easiest, quickest climate change references to jump into. I'll be publishing the page soon. In the meantime, leave a comment if you'd like my top few recommended references.)

Lighting the tap water on fire

Thousands of people have walked streets, paddled in front of coal ships, camped on coal train tracks, and demanded political action in other ways in the last couple weeks.* They've demanded that governments break free from fossil fuels (pictures and overview).

I experienced a brief bit of euphoria this afternoon as I started meeting people with whom I would soon bus down to DC to march for an end to offshore drilling. These are people committed to forging a path to a different future from the one towards which current economic and political policies are barreling us.

All of us participating in today's actions want a clean energy future and we all know that it will take something to work this problem out - it's not going to work itself out.

The fight against pollution and climate change can seem abstract at times; but wherever people live, people will fight for their water. Even die for it. - Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything

And that's what brought us to DC today. We're fighting for water, we're fighting for food, we're fighting for the chance at a fulfilling and healthy life for all, and especially for our kids, each other, and people like us and you, who all deserve access to the necessities and deeply satisfying complements of a fulfilling life.

I chatted with people twice my age and people less than half my age, white people and black people, lawyers and doctors, women and men, girls and boys. The energy of being together had us all smiling and hopeful, present to possibility and a strange power to actually pull this thing off. This thing: transforming our economic landscape from an exploitative extractivism to a sustaining opportunity at a fulfilling life for all.**

And I talked with at least a few people about the challenge I am experiencing: facts are insufficient to cause a transformation in perspective and volition necessary to move peacefully towards a better future, but what should I say and how should I say it to actually aid this kind of shift? What intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and/or physical needles must I thread myself through to feed momentum toward a future where all life is respected, appreciated, and fulfilled?

The scene in the film where landowner Mike Markham ignites gas from a well water faucet in his home with a cigarette lighter due to natural gas exploration in the area is a far more effective argument against fracking than any report or speech. - Maxime Combes, French economist

By mid-trip my euphoria had waned. I didn't expect it to last, but I didn't foresee the sobering agent being a memory from 2003. The last DC rallies I remembered participating in were anti-war rallies. The energy, camaraderie, and rightness of those experiences were dissolved by one simple statement by President Bush, and the war proceeded without delay. It really seemed to me like we were going to prevent the invasion of Iraq; millions had rallied around the world on a single day, and thousands of us met in DC on multiple occasions.

Some of the chants from today stung a little, messages about people being united, about the movement being incapable of being defeated. It can be defeated. It may be defeated. An industry is betting on it and politicians are being paid for it.

But this movement is our movement, for us and for our kids. The tap water is on fire, I just can't get you to see it yet.


* Vancouver, BC; Seattle, WA; Washington, DC; Los Angeles, CA; Albany, NY; Anacortes, WA; Chicago, IL; Proschim, Lusatia, Germany; Aliaga, Turkey; Newcastle, Australia; Ogoniland, Nigeria; Jakarta, Indonesia.

** "We know that we are trapped within an economic system that has it backward; it behaves as if there is no end to what is actually finite (clean water, fossil fuels, and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions) while insisting that there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually quite flexible: the financial resources that human institutions manufacture, and that, if imagined differently, could build the kind of caring society we need." - Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything